Text: Amos 1:1-2, 5:14-15, 21-24
Date: 11.12.2017
Pleasant
Street UMC, Waterville, ME
© Thomas L.
Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
1The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of
Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and
in the days of King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the
earthquake.
2And he said:
The Lord roars from Zion,
and utters his voice from Jerusalem;
the pastures of the shepherds wither,
and the top of Carmel dries up.
14 Seek good and not evil,
that you may live;
and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
just as you have said.
15 Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Let justice
roll down.
Wow, I can’t
believe I’m preaching on this text again, after quite possibly having exhausted
it in last Spring’s Lenten series. But
just when we want to relax into the Beatitudes, or the 23rd Psalm,
or Baby Jesus in the Manger, the voice of Amos roars again from the pages of
the Hebrew Scriptures. “Let justice roll
down,” he cries. “Let justice roll
down.”
And if this
were an ordinary week, I might have been inclined to filter out that voice, and
grab an alternative, less-disturbing, text.
But it’s been a disturbing week, hasn’t it? As we were singing last Sunday, // at the
very moment we were singing last Sunday,
“Let thy Congregation escape tribulation…”, an apparently mentally ill security
guard, continued and magnified a pattern of domestic abuse by taking his
emotional instability out on his ex-mother-in-law’s congregation in Texas. And because a bureaucratic error had placed
in his hands a weapon designed for the battlefield, rather than the target
range or the forest, dozens of men, women, elders, and children were dead and
injured in minutes, all in the place they felt closest to God and one another.
And so, yet
again, America is standing over the bodies of children and their parents and
grandparents, trying to explain how this blood sacrifice is necessary to ensure
that our right to bear arms shall not be infringed. And then Amos, rises up once again. “Let justice roll down; let justice roll
down.”
I haven’t
spoken or written very often about this topic, in part because I get both sides
of this national conversation. I was
raised in Aroostook County, and when I was 12 or 13, like most of my peers who
lived out of town, I picked a lot of potatoes one fall, and purchased my first
gun, a .22 rifle, down at the hardware store.
I did so with the encouragement of my Dad who probably bought his first firearm in the same
store. I remember agonizing over which
one to buy, in part because I wanted my Dad to be pleased with my choice, and
in part because I had never spent $ 60 before, had never had $ 60 before. After I made my decision, I signed my name in
the registry, and my dad signed as the responsible adult, and we brought the
gun home with 100 rounds of ammunition.
And then I was told again, that I would not touch, load, or fire that
gun until I had finished “the course.”
“The course,” in our city was taught by the same guy who had taught my
dad and uncle how to handle a firearm. It
wouldn’t surprise me if he had taught my grandfather and his brothers as
well. Small towns are like that. And at “the course” we learned a few
things. Like: every gun is always loaded; never point a gun
at anyone, ever; never pick up a gun when you’re tired, or angry, or
distracted, or been drinking; never ease the safety off or put your finger on
the trigger unless you intend to fire; and never ever fire when hunting, unless you can clearly see not only your
target, but what’s behind it. We were
taught as well to admonish our peers who ignored these rules, that owning a gun
was not simply a right, but a privilege, and like most privileges it came with
responsibilities.
I lived on a
farm, though we didn’t farm it, and down where the fields met the woods, there
was a pile of dirt that formed the back of our shooting range. It had been that way for at least two
generations before me, probably more.
And there the adults in my life drilled me on the safety rules, and
showed me how to shoot after breathing out, before breathing in again. Paper target after paper target felt the
sting of my bullets, and I became bonded to my Dad and great Uncles in a way
that was unprecedented in my life, as they passed down skills that had been
passed down to them, skills that had meant the difference between life and
starvation for our distant ancestors. I
was never much of a hunter, though I did do pretty well at the local turkey
shoot one year. The kid with the best
score won a frozen turkey. That wasn’t
me, but I was proud to represent my family, in the midst of the other families
gathered there, our neighbors.
I say all of
that to acknowledge that I get it. When
my fellow citizens point out that a heritage of responsible gun ownership and
use is a part of our culture, they’re right.
When all those pieces are in place:
responsible parents, dedicated safety instructors, appropriate
locations, and constant vigilance, learning to use a gun safely and carefully
is part of the American experience, at least it was part of mine. Doing so is probably one of the better
memories of my childhood, it is one of the few rituals left in our culture for
defining the boundary between childhood and adulthood, and it formed a bond
between me and the men in my life who were not naturally given to displays of
love or affection; this is what we did instead.
After mastering the safe use of a weapon, I was welcomed into the
fraternity of the hunting camp where men told stories of their greatest hunt,
ate forbidden foods with abandon, and played unspeakable pranks on one another. It was there that I heard about Bud Smith’s
buck that jumped off a cliff after being shot, landing in a tree below, still
twenty feet in the air, hanging there, taunting him. I learned the Aroostook County version of the
tale of the fur-bearing trout, only to be found in the deepest and coldest of
lakes (I still haven’t caught one!). And
I learned that the taking of the life of a deer or moose was serious business,
and no part of it should go to waste.
So,
yeah. Good memories, beautiful
experiences, life-long relationships. I
get it. The thought that someone would
come along and diminish that experience because of a political theory hammered
out in a distant city was ridiculed in my home town, it still is, as it
threatens a delicate thread that connects us to those who came before, a
tradition that, in small ways, helps define who we are today.
But // as I
picture those poor kids and their parents, last week, in Church, huddled under
pews, hushing the little ones, trying to hide from evil, I know that something
has gone wrong. And the source of the
problem harkens back to “the course,” those principles I learned as a young
man, that owning a gun, firing a gun, is not only a right but a privilege, and a
privilege divorced from responsibility is a privilege that can be taken away, must be taken away, until a sense of
responsibility can be restored.
The problem,
of course, is that the weapons that provide us with food or mastery on the
range or the biathlon course, have long since been turned on human targets. The Veterans we commemorate today served in
wars, many of them, great conflicts of nations that required ever more
powerful, deadlier, more effective weapons.
And as time has passed, the sad business of war, and its implements, have
somehow found their way to our door steps, our parking lots, our schools, our
courthouses, and even our homes. In
today’s world, a momentary flash of anger can instigate or be responded to with
deadly force before rational thought has even a moment to assert itself. Down in Augusta last week, one man telling
another that his shoe was untied led to the drawing of a weapon. How does that happen?
The point is
that something needs to change. Now,
there may be grand schemes to make us a weaponless culture, but you and I know
that neither the political will nor the moral outrage exists to make that
happen in our nation, at least not in my lifetime. At my age, my aspirations are much simpler,
and I hope realistic. Can we at least, as
a society, stop abiding the death of children?
Is that too much to ask? Cutting
off lives at the root before they even have a chance to begin? I’m not afraid of the adults and teens who
grew up in my hometown and had the experiences I did relative to firearms; I
have no desire to take those weapons away.
But when someone has a proven history of violent acts, mental
instability, or sexual aggression; or when the weapons or ammunition they want
to purchase is compatible only with an act of massive destruction or injury, is
it too much to ask that someone take notice and be empowered to do something
before it’s too late? Before more
children die?
I know we’ll
never perfect such a system, but can’t we even try? Can’t we have a quiet reasonable discussion
somewhere on middle ground, and remind ourselves
·
that responsible gun ownership and a truly effective background
check are not incompatible with one another?
·
That knowing who’s responsible for every weapon sold can help us hold someone responsible when they’re
used illegally?
·
That if it’s someone’s job to keep the records about who’s
ineligible to own a firearm, then let them understand that lives are depending
upon their accuracy, diligence, and timeliness?
·
And that perhaps we should worry about justice for our children, as
much before a trigger is pulled, as
we do afterwards?
While we
work for change, and I mean actually do
something to make change happen, we should remember those amazing Baptists in
Sutherland Springs, TX, gathered for worship this morning, not half a block
from where their brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren died last
Sunday. They need our thoughts and prayers, absolutely, but we need their thoughts and prayers as well, as
they stand there preaching, and singing, and hugging, and showing the love of
God to the world on Sunday morning.
Where else would God’s people be?
And we should remember the Veterans in our midst
and in our surrounding communities, who stood in harm’s way because our society
asked them to, believing it was in the best interest of human freedom. “No one desires Peace, more than those who
have gone to war,” one sage has written (Anon.), and as a people of peace, it
is up to us to find a way to make a difference.
Our world deserves it; our veterans deserve it, and our children deserve
it.
By the door
where you exit, there’s half a sheet of paper, listing the names of our legal
representatives, the people who can make a difference when it comes to
protecting our children from violence.
I’m going to challenge you to write one or more of them a letter this
week, and to let them know what you feel about this issue. You don’t need to tell them what your pastor
thinks; you may think your pastor’s out to lunch; that’s okay. As a United Methodist you have that
right. But whatever your opinion is, don’t let it sit in your mind, unexpressed. Because this is going to happen again, and
again, and again. And our children
deserve better than that, our grandchildren deserve better than that, every
child of God deserves better than that.
And I believe we can save lives by speaking up and creating some
reasonable limitations on one human being’s ability to hurt another.
Inspired by
our neighbors in uniform, we’re standing in harm’s way this Veteran’s Day
weekend, putting our bodies between those who would deal out violence, and the
lives that they would take. After all,
you showed up at church this morning, knowing that we are vulnerable, that our
doors are open, didn’t you? To sing the
hymns, and pray the prayers, and hear the Word, and to stand for justice. We are here this morning together to protect
the innocent in whatever way we can, and to create the world that can be, not to lament the world that has
been.
So let
justice roll down like water, sisters and brothers. Let justice roll down, for the kids, for the
elders, for all of us. Amen.
